Jail after guilty plea

By
ANDREW THOMSON

Jail after guilty plea

A WARRNAMBOOL drug user has been jailed for six months after pleading guilty to trafficking amphetamine.

Magistrate Michael Coghlan said Lindsay White, 49, of Baker Grove, had a long history of amphetamine use and that habit had an impact on the defendant’s mental health.

“In the end this stuff catches up with you. The brain doesn’t like it that much,” Mr Coghlan told White.

White was sentenced to serve six months’ imprisonment with the 61 days he has been in custody taken off that sentence.

White was charged with burglary and theft in relation to entering an abandoned building in Wentworth Street on May 5 and stealing gym equipment.

On July 14 police pulled over a white Holden sedan which was travelling west along Raglan Parade.

In a search of the vehicle a package was found under White’s leg which contained seven grams of rock amphetamine with a street value of $5000.

On September 24 White was searched in Fleetwood Court and police found four grams of amphetamine in a glasses case and 13 resealable plastic bags.

A witness told police that people attended at White’s home during the day or night for short periods of time and left with small resealable bags.

Defence counsel Robert Thyssen said White appeared in the Warrnambool County Court during September on drug charges and received a $300 fine.

White had appealed against the severity of a two-month jail term and Judge Bill Stuart blasted south-west magistrates for sentencing offenders such as White to jail terms when he believed there were other options.

Yesterday police did not apply for a previously suspended jail sentence to be reactivated.